By the turn of the twenty-first century, mutual insurance seemed all but forgotten in the Western world. Both the expansion of the welfare state and the ascent of commercial insurance during the course of the twentieth century had eclipsed mutual insurance as a means to cover the basic risks of life. Yet, now that the welfare state is retreating and commercial insurance is becoming more and more inaccessible, mutual insurance is once again on the rise. The growing popularity of mutual insurance merits a closer look at its history. How and why did it work? Can it still work today? With these “simple questions” in mind (4), Van Leeuwen explores the history of mutual insurance from the mid-sixteenth century to the present.
Van Leeuwen defines mutual insurance as “insurance run by the insured” (5), effectively linking the guilds of the sixteenth century with nineteenth-century friendly societies and modern forms of...